Tikka!

We'd recently been talking about how we were hungry for Indian food when I noticed Pastor Ryan of This is Reverb had a new recipe listed at Pioneer Woman's site - Tikka Masala. That was all it took - and by chance, we had everything but the fresh ginger and the yogurt, so a quick trip to Super Wal-Mart and we were set (and as an added bonus, we decided to try the garlic naan bread from their bakery, and wow, that's some SERIOUSLY good stuff!)

I followed Ryan's recipe with some minor changes... Rather than just season/coat the chicken breasts with cumin, coriander and yogurt right before putting them under the broiler, I put all that in a bag with the chicken breasts and let them marinate in it all day, figuring the yogurt would help tenderize the oversized chicken breasts we happened to have - boy did it!


And I stopped broiling the chicken after it had been in the oven TWICE as long as Ryan suggested - again, I blame that on the Dolly Parton-sized breasts. The chicken/yogurt never got crispy charred bits - I don't know if the chicken was too big and was still steamy, or if the low-fat yogurt was to blame. (It's really hard to find a full-fat yogurt around here like Ryan had in his recipe!)

Brett was having some stomach issues at the time, so rather than set up an assault against his then-delicate-constitution, I left out any heat (so no serrano peppers). After having the dish, we both agreed we do like SOME heat in our Indian and felt next time we should've leave something like this out.

Oh, and I noticed Ryan was recommending diced tomatoes, but Brett's one of those folks (I know too many of them) who don't like chunks of tomatoes showing up in their dishes, so I went with crushed tomatoes (which I'd seen recommended as an alternative in a recent Cook's Illustrated recipe for something like this). Worked out great - I think we both preferred it with the crushed tomatoes. Just before the tomato sauce was to have the cream added, I dumped in the chopped up, still SLIGHTLY undercooked chicken, and simmered that for a few minutes. Maybe this added to the extra-tenderness of the chicken? Whatever did it - this was a GOOD dish!

And how about the rice? WOW! I've never added butter to the rice cooker before, but that, plus the turmeric, a bit of salt, and then the peas at the end (which we've done before) was such a TASTY combination! YUUUUUM!!


We've both decided this recipe is definitely a keeper. It made a lot - I had it for dinner than night plus leftovers for lunch/dinner for the next four meals. PLUS Brett was eating the stuff. So yeah, it made a lot, but it was really good...definitely a recipe we recommend!